If DUP really objected to list of IRA get out of jail free cards they would pull plug on the whole rotten Stormont setup

By Samuel Morrison

If DUP really objected to list of IRA get out of jail free cards they would pull plug on the whole rotten Stormont setup

BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

It is a fundamental right of every citizen to expect that they will be protected by their Government. When you are a victim of a crime you have a right to expect that the police and courts will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

Peter Robinson at Hillsborough Castle for a crunch meeting with Secretary of State Theresa Villiers. Pic Aiden O'Reilly

It is a fundamental right of every citizen to expect that they will be protected by their Government. When you are a victim of a crime you have a right to expect that the police and courts will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

The UK Government failed the victims of the Hyde Park bombing in this regard. They were denied the right to even see the man accused of the bombing stand trial because of a grubby deal to further “the peace process”.

Peace bought at the price of sacrificing justice is not true peace. It’s appeasement of terror.

The letters issued to on the run terror suspects – something which victims were never informed of - perverted the judicial system. Victims, as so often in the so-called peace process, never came into the equation.

And now we have the political theatre of Peter Robinson threatening to resign over the issue.

If the DUP really objected to a list of Gerry Kelly’s mates getting get out of jail free cards they would pull the plug on the whole rotten Stormont setup and admit they were wrong to go into undemocratic mandatory collation with the IRA’s political wing in 2007.

After all, as Peter Hain has told us in multiple interviews over the last 24 hours, “this was a critical part of the peace deal”.

The foundations of the “peace deal” are poisonous to truth and justice and an insult to those who paid the ultimate price at the hands of terrorists.

It’s time we in Northern Ireland faced up to that reality.

Co-First Minister Robinson has in the past made clear that he regards the term Jeremiah as derogatory.

Readers will recall how he branded his critics “a tribe of Jeremiahs” in May last year. One wonders if that was because the Old Testament prophet warned against those who “have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”